🔗 Share this article

While The London club didn't entirely destroy their hopes of finishing in the highest eight places of the continental tournament group stage, they executed a precise, surgical strike on their own chances of waltzing straight into the round of 16. Of course, the good news is that in the brief history of the new and not-necessarily-improved competition, securing a top-eight finish isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Core Problem: A Monotonous Inconsistency

Unfortunately for the club's supporters, the only consistent thing about Enzo Maresca’s side is a monotonously predictable lack of consistency, which has been much remarked upon since their loss in Italy. After seemingly confirming their quality with an impressive beat-down of a European giant, and then a bad-tempered draw with a London rival, Chelsea have been defeated by Leeds, played out a snoozy stalemate at the south coast club and have now lost against a mid-table side from Serie A.

Although critics have been quick to lay the blame on a team selection approach that appears to see Enzo Maresca rotate his team like a kebab shop’s elephant leg of doner meat, the Chelsea head coach insists that, injuries and suspensions aside, the nucleus of his starting lineup for big matches is mostly fixed.

“I think tonight, first XI, we had on the field the majority of the team that featured against Spurs, they played against Barcelona, they play against Wolverhampton, Arsenal,” he droned. “There were eight, nine players that are the ones consistently selected for matches of this magnitude. So if you see the several alterations that we did from the previous game, it’s different.”

The Path Forward

To have any realistic chance of avoiding the additional knockout round, they will have to be victorious in their remaining two matches. In the first, they welcome this season’s surprise package a Cypriot team, before heading back to the continent to face the Serie A champions, the Neapolitan side.

“We need to win both, otherwise, we try to play the extra round and then go to the next round,” sniffed the Italian coach, whose following fixture is a match against an Merseyside team whose recent consistency has propelled them to the surprising position of the top half in the domestic league.

Side Stories

Notable Comment: “You know, it’s somewhat ironic because his greatest wish was me turning pro in golf. That was his ultimate ambition. So when I was 10, he pushed me to take up golf. So I practiced every week from when I was 10 to 13” – Erling Haaland explained how, if his father had his preference, he could have been teeing off rather than tearing it up in the top flight.

Fan Correspondence

“Well, no wonder Wolves are in such a sad state. As any regular reader of this column will know, the only effective pre-match protests involve walking from a pub that the supporters planned to be at anyway, to the ground that they were inevitably going to. Just arriving 10 minutes late? That’s how long it takes fans to get to their seats anyway” – a correspondent.

“I see that one correspondent not only got Tuesday’s letter o’ the day, but also a mention in a separate letter. On a night where both clubs from Sheffield once more surrendered points after leading, I am led to ponder: could the city be proving that the regularity of representation in your mailbag is inversely related to the value of anything our teams are achieving on the field?” – a different supporter.